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Regulation, Disruption, and the Technologies of 2013

Overview
Perhaps the most common critique of the technology industry today is that too much money,
ability, and energy is focused on social games, photosharing, advertising, todo lists, and the
like. Some critics harken to a past where the Valley invested in tangible breakthroughs in
PCs, semiconductors, and networking, others can’t find much positive to say about technology
in general, and generally many people feel that the Valley is now suffering from a failure of
imagination (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). A related and overlapping critique is that an innovation
slowdown has occurred. This thesis has been most prominently advanced by Tyler Cowen
in The Great Stagnation and by Founders Fund. While Cowen points to the macroscopic
plateau in Total Factor Productivity, FF makes the empirical case for technological slowdown
via three concrete examples in What Happened to the Future:

1. The travel speed from NY to London has actually decreased, with the retiring of the
Concorde.

2. The cost of approving a drug has soared precipitously to $3-4 billion.

3. The cost of electricity in cents-per-kilowatt-hour has actually increased.

Let’s pull these observations together and see if we can advance a causal hypothesis. Is there
some kind of force that is discouraging future entrepreneurs from working on substantive
problems, especially in the physical world, despite their large market size? Or is it simply a
question of a lack of ideas or bravery on the part of Silicon Valley?

Gaining Context
Before we answer in the abstract, let’s begin with an assemblage of news clips to set the stage,
a bit like Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke. There are quite a few of these, but by the end
you will have some context and perhaps some hypotheses as to what’s going on.

Transportation and Lodging

A four year NHTSA ban on self-driving cars (CS Monitor):

The last few years have seen self-driving cars go from the stuff of science fiction
to the scientific method. Real cars are really driving themselves on some roads,
and many current or near-future cars offer some form of assisted driving already.
But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) wants to ban
them.

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 Or, NHTSA wants each state to ban them, at least. In an announcement today
outlining its policy on automated vehicles, NHTSA called for the ban of public
use of self-driving cars. . . .
It’s not yet clear how long NHTSA wants the ban to be in place; according to
today’s announcement, it could be a long, long ban:
“While the technology remains in early stages, NHTSA is conducting research on
self-driving vehicles so that the agency has the tools to establish standards for
these vehicles, should the vehicles become commercially available. The first phase
of this research is expected to be completed within the next four years,” the agency
said in the statement.
James Fallows, Atlantic Editor, on Uber vs. Washington DC (The Atlantic):

As a longtime resident of DC, I am accustomed to misadventures in governance

in our “taxation without representation” existence here. But a fight over a new
competitor to the District’s (often horrible) taxi service offers something I haven’t
seen in a while. Not routine retail-level corruption, nor skillful top-level favor
trading, but instead what appears to be a blatant attempt to legislate favors for
one set of interests by hamstringing another. I know, I know, this happens all the
time – but the seeming crudity of this one gets my attention. ..
But it appears that the DC Council will vote today on a proposal to cripple Uber
by ensuring that its minimum fare is five times higher than that for metered taxis,
which also rules out a lower-cost hybrid option Uber has just introduced. C’mon!

Uber, Lyft, Sidecar and the CPUC (LA Times):

California Public Utilities Commission Chairman Michael R. Peevey sent a not-

so-subtle message to the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday: Hands off Uber,
Lyft and Sidecar.
The commission had previously asserted jurisdiction over the companies and their
ilk, which enable customers to use a smartphone app to summon rides from
limousines (Uber) or private cars (Lyft, Sidecar, InstantCab). Peevey’s proposed
rule, which the full commission could consider in September, declares that such
“transportation network companies” are “charter party passenger carriers,” which
are subject to the PUC’s jurisdiction, and not taxis, which would be subject to
local oversight.
Some members of the Los Angeles City Council have taken the opposite view,
proposing an ordinance to regulate Web-enabled transportation companies as
taxis.

Elon Musk of Tesla and Car Dealers (Jalopnik):

Another week, another victory for Tesla in their ongoing war with car dealerships.
This time it’s in North Carolina, whose legislature has backed off on a bill that
would have blocked Tesla sales in that state.
That bill, backed by the N.C. Automobile Dealers Association, would have made
the direct-to-customer sales model used by Tesla illegal in North Carolina. Though

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 it didn’t mention Tesla by name, the bill was intended as a shot at the com-
pany, whose sales model threatens the traditional dealer-as-middleman concept
that dominates how cars are sold.
The North Carolina bill made it through their senate, but the Raleigh News &
Observer reports that House members weren’t too keen on it - in part because of
Tesla’s strong quarterly profits, and because they liked the Model S after taking
it for a test drive along with Gov. Pat McCrory.

John Carmack, co-founder of iD Software, lead programmer on Quake and Doom, and founder
of Armadillo Aerospace (link)

A couple things slowly brought me around to paying more attention. A computer

game company doesn’t need to have much to do with the government, but a
company that flies rocket ships is a different matter. Due to Armadillo Aerospace,
in the last decade I have observed and interacted with a lot of different agencies,
civil servants, and congressmen, and I have collected enough data points to form
some opinions.
My core thesis is that the federal government delivers very poor value for the
resources it consumes, and that society as a whole would be better off with a
government that was less ambitious. This is not to say that it doesn’t provide many
valuable and even critical services, but that the cost of having the government
provide them is much higher than you would tolerate from a company or individual
you chose to do business with. For almost every task, it is a poor tool.
So much of the government just grinds up money, like shoveling cash into a wood
chipper. It is ghastly to watch. Billions and billions of dollars. Imagine every
stupid dot-com company that you ever heard of that suckered in millions of dollars
of investor money before leaving a smoking crater in the ground with nothing to
show for it. Add up all that waste, all that stupidity. All together, it is a rounding
error versus the analogous program results in the government. Private enterprises
can’t go on squandering resources like that for long, but it is standard operating
procedure for the government.
Even if you could snap your fingers and get it, do you really want a razor sharp
federal apparatus ready to efficiently carry out the mandates of whoever is the
supreme central planner at the moment? The US government was explicitly de-
signed to make that difficult, and I think that was wise.
So, the federal government is essentially doomed to inefficiency, no matter who is
in charge or what policies they want it to implement. I probably haven’t lost too
many people at this point - almost nobody thinks that the federal government is
a paragon of efficiency, and it doesn’t take too much of an open mind to entertain
the possibility that it might be much worse than you thought (it is).

Peers.org and Collaborative Consumption (Politico):

Founding partners include short-term apartment rental company Airbnb, car-

sharing companies Getaround and Lyft, solar projects company Solar Mosaic and
others. . . . PEERS “is a grass-roots organization that supports the sharing econ-
omy movement. We believe that by sharing what we already have - like cars,

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 homes, skills and time - everyone benefits in the process.” The group will be led
by former Obama campaign and Democratic National Committee Digital Director
Natalie Foster. Milicent Johnson, who founded a similar sharing advocacy group
in the Bay area, will serve as director of partnerships and community building.
Obama campaign veteran Alex Lofton will serve as managing director, while James
Slezak will be director of strategy.

Drone Startups and the FAA (Wired):

Domestic-Drone Industry Prepares for Big Battle With Regulators . . .
“I didn’t change any guidelines,” Williams interrupted. “I didn’t say that any
guidelines changed. I said that if a farmer as an individual wants to operate an
unmanned aircraft according to the modeling rules, they can do that. The FAA
rules are very clear about for-compensation and hire. If you’re going to operate
an aircraft for compensation or hire, there’s a different set of rules that apply. So,
you know, I’m not gonna split hairs over whether the farmer is making a profit or
not, nor are we going to go look for him, but the bottom line is the rules are the
rules and we have to enforce them until they’re changed.”
“So unmanned aircraft companies can operate R&D as long as they’re within the
modeling guidelines?” Novara continued. Laughter and applause broke out among
the hundreds of drone enthusiasts inside the Tyson’s Corner Ritz-Carlton.
“That’s why we have experimental certificates, to allow manufacturers-”
“The farmer doesn’t need an experimental certificate,” Novara pressed, “and ev-
eryone knows the experimental certificate process is available but not actually
functional.”
Williams conceded that the current FAA rules “need to change,” since they were
written for manned aircraft, “and that’s why we’re working hard to get the small
unmanned aircraft rule out that will help resolve these issues. Until such time, we
have to enforce the rules that are in place.”
“Is everyone else clear on this?” Novara asked, to bales of laughter. Some in the
crowd shouted “No!” . . .
“If we were all smart guys, we’d be in consumer products, right?” Novara tells
Danger Room. “It’s what I like doing. There’s just no money in it.”
AirBnB and New York State (Guardian):
What about the legal issues, in cities and countries where people aren’t allowed to
rent out their rooms or properties without being licensed to do so? New York, Am-
sterdam and Quebec are just three high-profile examples of places where Airbnb
has faced regulatory scrutiny.
Gebbia was bullish in his response. “When the car was introduced in 1908, people
could experience a brand new way to travel that was more efficient than a horse
and buggy,” he said.
“Can you believe that cities tried to outlaw cars in the United States? Can you
imagine driving a car for a year then having to go back to a horse and buggy?
The policy-makers adjusted to meet the demands of the people. We believe it’s

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 time for our invention, and it appears the world agrees, given we’re in 40k cities
in 192 countries.”

Payments and Finance

Bart Chilton of CPUMC on Bitcoin (Reuters):

The top U.S. derivatives regulator is considering whether the Bitcoin virtual cur-
rency should be subject to its rules, a top official at the agency said.
Bart Chilton, one of five commissioners at the Commodity Futures Trading Com-
mission, said he had asked staff to explore whether consumers needed more pro-
tection from any mishaps with Bitcoin, whose value collapsed last month.
“Here’s what I know for sure: we could regulate it if we wanted. That is very
clear,” Chilton told Reuters in an interview on Monday. The Financial Times was
first to report on Chilton’s plans.

Bitcoin Foundation Response to Cease and Desist Letter (Ars Technica, Coindesk):

According to the DFI’s letter, which was sent on May 30, the Bitcoin Foundation
requires licensure as a money transmitter under California law.
“The California state DFI said this was an invitation to talk. I’ve received nicer
invitations, but we took it then as an opportunity to engage in a discussion about
what we think the issues are and how we think the law agrees,” Patrick Murck of
the Bitcoin Foundation told CoinDesk.
The primary points raised in the response letter are that the foundation doesn’t
sell bitcoins nor operates in California, so it is not under the jurisdiction of the
DFI.
“Even if we did operate an exchange or sell bitcoins, we have never done it with
anyone in California, so they have no jurisdictional basis for coming and looking
at us in the first place,” said Murck. . . .
Murck went on to say he thinks the response letter, which was drafted by legal
firm Perkins Coie, will lead to more discussions with the DFI over the next few
weeks, and will hopefully result in a letter of opinion.
Murck said attorneys are starting to become very popular among those in bitcoin
and advised people with any concerns to seek legal advice. “It was great to walk
into the Bitcoin London conference yesterday and have a legal panel that people
love and pay so much attention to, but it’s also a shame. “The people who should be
front and centre on the stage are the entrepreneurs building companies. Hopefully
we can get back to that place,” he concluded.

Paypal and the Patriot Act (CNN):

EBay’s PayPal accused of violating Patriot Act

PALO ALTO, California (Reuters) – A federal prosecutor has alleged eBay Inc.
unit PayPal violated a 2001 anti-terror law aimed at fighting money laundering
when it provided payment services to online gambling companies, the Web auc-
tioneer said in its annual report filed Monday.

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Eliot Spitzer and Paypal (Who Killed Paypal):

But PayPal’s regulatory troubles persisted. The banking industry had tried and
failed several times to set up competitors to PayPal and Billpoint. As entrenched
industries often do, it turned to government when its efforts in the marketplace
failed. Oregon, California, Illinois, and Louisiana subsequently sent Billpoint no-
tices that it had failed to get a money transfer license. A director from the
American Banking Association told CNET that online payment services should
be classified and regulated as commercial banks - a move that likely would have
killed off all online payment services except those run by existing banks.
More class actions followed. New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer cited PayPal
for posting a user agreement that “wasn’t clear enough.” He also subpoenaed
all documents pertaining to PayPal’s use in online gaming sites, suggesting the
company was in violation of New York gambling laws. Spitzer’s investigation was
followed by a U.S. Justice Department determination that PayPal’s use by gaming
sites was a violation of the USA PATRIOT Act.
The financial pressures of battling aggressive government officials and opportunis-
tic class action lawyers, all while trying to stave off a better-funded competitor,
soon became too much for the still-young company to bear. “It was clear,” Jack-
son writes, “that PayPal now faced many challenges outside the marketplace. En-
trepreneurial nimbleness may have helped us survive the company’s post-merger
internal turmoil and Billpoint’s fierce competitive charge, but these new threats
would require a different approach.”
In July 2002 PayPal executives sold the start-up firm to their longtime nemesis,
eBay. Jackson notes that the sale had some obvious benefits. The company’s
new parent already had a formidable, well-funded legal team in place to deal with
PayPal’s litigation and regulation troubles. Also, eBay promised to do away with
Billpoint, essentially securing PayPal’s position as the premier online payment
provider.

Online Poker and UIGEA (PDF):

The business of online gambling spans the globe and touches every corner of the
United States. Worldwide, online gambling is increasingly a legal and regulated
activity that generates almost $30 billion of revenue a year. In the United States,
public policy on the subject has been schizophrenic. Online gambling is presently
being conducted domestically for pari-mutuel betting on horse races and for state
lotteries, yet government policy has been hostile to otherforms of online gam-
bling, and hasincluded criminal prosecutions of online gambling operators and
their payment processing partners. Despite this government opposition, millions
of Americans spend $4 billion every year to gamble online. Prosecutions against
online gambling operators have driven the more responsible offshore operators out
of the U.S. market, leaving Americans to conduct their online gambling through
largely unregulated websites.
In contrast, about 85 nations have chosen to legalize and regulate online gambling.
Numerous Western nations - including the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and
some provinces in Canada - have created structuresfor tight regulation of the online

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 gambling industry. This course provides consumer protections for individuals while
also generating jobs, economic opportunity and government revenue.

SEC vs. Crowdfunding (Morrill, Crowdvalley):

On March 26th The Funders Club received a no-action letter from the Securities
and Exchange Commission stating that it will not recommend enforcement ac-
tion against the year-old private equity investment platform, making it the first
government sanctioned online VC.
. . . AngelList, a competing service used by early stage companies to receive intro-
ductions to investors and take some online investment, received its own no-action
letter just two days later on March 28th.

Goldman, Facebook, and the SEC (Wired):

Goldman-Facebook Deal Draws SEC Scrutiny of Startup Investing (Updated)

Goldman Sachs’ $450 million investment in social networking juggernaut Facebook
has prompted a federal inquiry into whether the deal is designed to avoid rules
aimed at protecting investors, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing “people
familiar with the situation.”

Biotech

Figure 1: The FDA has officially taken the position that “There is No Right to Consume or Feed
Children Any Particular Food”, “There is No Generalized Right to Bodily and Physical Health”, and
“There is No Fundamental Right to Freedom of Contract” and that its regulations “Rationally Advance
the Agency’s Public Health Mission”. (Source: FDA US District Court Brief, pages 25-27).

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FDA: “There is No Generalized Right to Bodily or Physical Health” (FDA Legal Filing):

FDA: There is No Generalized Right to Bodily and Physical Health.

Plaintiffs’ assertion of a “fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health,
which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves
and their families” is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a funda-
mental right to obtain any food they wish. In addition, courts have consistently
refused to extrapolate a generalized right to “bodily and physical health” from the
Supreme Court’s narrow substantive due process precedents regarding abortion,
intimate relations, and the refusal of lifesaving medical treatment.
See Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 721 (warning that the fact “[t]hat many of the rights
and liberties protected by the Due Process Clause sound in personal autonomy
does not warrant the sweeping conclusion that any and all important, intimate,
and personal decisions are so protected”); see also Cowan v. United States, 5 F.
Supp. 2d 1235, 1242 (N.D. Okla. 1998) (rejecting a claim that the plaintiff had
the fundamental “right to take whatever treatment he wishes due to his terminal
condition regardless of whether the FDA approves the treatment”).

Reputation and Power, Chapter 1 (PDF)

None of this import was lost on Genentech’s executive at the time, G. Kirk Raab.
Raab was hired specifically to smooth the company’s journey through the reg-
ulatory process. Years later, Raab would describe regulatory approval for his
products as the fundamental challenge facing his company. And he would depict
the Administration in a particularly vivid metaphor.

I’ve told a story hundreds of times to help people understand the FDA.
When I was in Brazil I worked on the Amazon River for many months
selling Terramycin for Pfizer. I hadn’t seen my family for eight or nine
months. They were flying in to Sao Paulo, and I was flying down from
some little village on the Amazon to Manous and then to Sao Paulo. I
was a young guy in his twenties. I couldn’t wait to see the kids. One of
them was a year-old baby, the other was three. I missed my wife.
There was a quonset hut in front of just a little dirt strip with a single
engine plane to fly me to Manous. I roll up and there is a Brazilian
soldier standing there. The military revolution had happened literally
the week before. So this soldier is standing there with this machine gun
and he said to me: "You can’t come in." I was speaking pretty good
Portuguese by that time. I said: "My god, my plane, my family, I gotta
come in!" He said again: "You can’t come in." I said: "I gotta come
in!" And he took his machine gun, took the safety off, and pointed it at
me, and said: "You can’t come in." And I said: "Oh, now I got it. I
can’t go in there."
And that’s the way I always describe the FDA. The FDA is standing
there with a machine gun against the pharmaceutical industry, so you
better be their friend rather than their enemy. They are the boss. If
you’re a pharmaceutical firm, they own you body and soul.

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 ... In practice, dealing with the fact of FDA power meant a fundamental change in
corporate structure and culture. At Abbott and at Genentech, Raab’s most central
transformation was in creating a culture of acquiescence toward a government
agency. As was done at other drug companies in the late twentieth century, Raab
essentially fired officials at Abbott who were insuffi ciently compliant with the
FDA.

Harvard’s Daniel Carpenter (Princeton Press):

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is the most powerful regulatory agency
in the world. How did the FDA become so influential? And how exactly does
it wield its extraordinary power? Reputation and Power traces the history of
FDA regulation of pharmaceuticals, revealing how the agency’s organizational
reputation has been the primary source of its power, yet also one of its ultimate
constraints.
Daniel Carpenter describes how the FDA cultivated a reputation for competence
and vigilance throughout the last century, and how this organizational image has
enabled the agency to regulate an industry as powerful as American pharmaceu-
ticals while resisting efforts to curb its own authority.

Google fined $500 million by the FDA (NYT):

The Justice Department’s settlement of a criminal investigation of Google for

allowing Canadian pharmacies to advertise drugs for distribution in the United
States reflected an effort by prosecutors to extend the reach of federal drug laws.
This may present future challenges to Internet search companies over their adver-
tisements.

ONC and FDA clash over EHR Regulation (iHealthBeat):

Under the direction of National Coordinator for Health IT David Blumenthal,

ONC has pushed for greater adoption of EHRs by health care providers.
FDA, charged with ensuring the safety and effectiveness of medical devices, has
called for greater regulation of EHR systems. In February, Jeffrey Shuren – head
of FDA’s medical devices division – linked six deaths and more than 200 injuries
to health IT problems, based primarily on voluntary reports to FDA.
ONC has dismissed Shuren’s findings as “anecdotal and fragmentary.” EHR pro-
ponents contend that excessive regulation could stifle EHR innovation and inhibit
EHR adoption. Proponents also state that, despite possible errors, EHRs are
generally safer than paper records.

Drug Shortages and Regulation (Health Affairs):

Output Controls. The Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been
stepping up its quality enforcement efforts - levying fines and forcing manufacturers
to retool their facilities both here and abroad. Not only has this more rigorous
regulatory oversight slowed down production, the FDA’s “zero tolerance” regime is
forcing manufacturers to abide by rules that are rigid, inflexible and unforgiving.

9
 For example, a drug manufacturer must get approval for how much of a drug it
plans to produce, as well as the timeframe. If a shortage develops (because, say,
the FDA shuts down a competitor’s plant), a drug manufacturer cannot increase
its output of that drug without another round of approvals. Nor can it alter its
timetable production (producing a shortage drug earlier than planned) without
FDA approval.
Even the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has a role - because minute quantities
of controlled substances are often used to make other drugs. This is the appar-
ent reason for a nationwide shortage of ADHD drugs, for example, including the
generic version of Ritalin. And like the FDA, DEA regulations are rigid and in-
flexible. For example, if a shortage develops and the manufacturers have reached
their preauthorized production cap, a manufacturer cannot respond by increasing
output without going back to the DEA for approval.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) also has a role levying
large fines for “overcharging,” forcing some companies to leave the generic market
altogether.

Roche statement on LDTs, including “Specific Suggested Changes to the Draft Guidance by
Line Number” (regulations.gov, pdf)

Roche is becoming increasingly concerned about FDA’s continued lack of over-

sight of LDTs. This lack of oversight, particularly when a cleared or approved
IVD is available, has created a dichotomy in which manufacturers of diagnostic
tests invest vast resources to research, develop, verify and validate innovative new
tests that are subject to intense FDA scrutiny, while clinical laboratories develop
and offer LDTs that are neither supported by clinical data nor subject to FDA’s
rigorous review . . . These differential standards, especially in companion diagnos-
tics, generate unnecessary and unacceptable risks for physicians and patients who
count on companion diagnostics to direct therapy, and create an uneven playing
field for manufacturers of cleared or approved IVD companion diagnostics.
Appendix: Specific Suggested Changes to the Draft Guidance by Line Number

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Figure 2: Roche’s specific line-item edits to proposed FDA regulation, by line number (Source: Roche
regulations.gov filing)

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FDA and DNA Dilemma Interview (Newsweek):

Newsweek: What exactly would constitute a “medical claim?” Would pointing

people to medical research papers [qualify]?
FDA: It depends. There are rules as to how one can do that - Those rules are
actually worked out pretty well, and they just would need to make sure they’re
staying within the rules.
Newsweek: Are those rules on the Web?
FDA: I don’t know where the policy is. I would have to get it for you. It’s an
agencywide policy. I would have to find it for you. And it won’t be that easy for
people to follow it. . .

FDA on information security (Washington Post):

The agency has urged hospitals to allow vendors to guide them on security of
sophisticated devices. But the vendors sometimes tell hospitals that they cannot
update FDA- approved systems, leaving those systems open to potential attacks.
In fact, the agency encourages such updates.
“A lot of people are very confused about FDA’s position on this,” said John Murray
Jr., a software compliance expert at the agency.

The Park Doctrine (Merola):

In United States v. Park, the Supreme Court held that a responsible corpo-
rate official can be convicted of a misdemeanor based on his or her position of
responsibility and authority to prevent and correct violations of the Food Drug
and Cosmetic Act (FDCA). Thus, evidence that an individual participated in the
alleged violations or even had knowledge of them is not necessary.

FDA issued one Form 483 every 50 minutes in 2011 (FDAZilla):

Based on new data obtained by FDAzilla, the FDA should surpass 10,000 483s in
2011 for the second time in its history, breaking its all-time record for the third
consecutive year. In 2010, the FDA issued 10,437 483s, breaking the previous high-
water mark of 9,666 in 2009. Through November 2, 2011, the FDA has issued 9,052
483s, approximately 215 more 483s than the same time period in 2010, roughly a
2.4% increase. Extrapolating for the rest of the year, we expect the FDA to issue
roughly 10,690 483s for 2011. That’s one 483 every 50 minutes.

UltraRad’s UltraPACS device labeled “adulterated”, in part for insufficient revision history of
Microsoft Sharepoint (fda.gov):

This inspection revealed that this device is adulterated within the meaning of
section 501(h) of the Act. . .
Off-the-shelf software (Microsoft SharePoint) is being used by your firm to manage
your quality system documents for document control and approval. However, your
firm has failed to adequately validate this software to ensure that it meets your

12
 Figure 3: Historical trend in FDA Warning Letters.

needs and intended uses. Specifically. at the time of this inspection there were two
different versions of your CAPA & Customer Complaint procedure, SOP-200-104;
however, no revision history was provided on the SharePoint document history.
Your firm has failed to validate the SharePoint software to meet your needs for
maintaining document control and versioning. . . .
You should take prompt action to correct the violations addressed in this letter.
Failure to promptly correct these violations may result in regulatory action being
initiated by FDA without further notice. These actions include, but are not limited
to, seizure, injunction, and/or civil money penalties.

Drug Approvals Cost $4B on Average (Matthew Herper):

The Truly Staggering Cost Of Inventing New Drugs

During the Super Bowl, a representative of the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly
posted the on the company’s corporate blog that the average cost of bringing a
new drug to market is $1.3 billion, a price that would buy 371 Super Bowl ads,
16 million official NFL footballs, two pro football stadiums, pay of almost all NFL
football players, and every seat in every NFL stadium for six weeks in a row. This
is, of course, ludicrous.
The average drug developed by a major pharmaceutical company costs at least $4
billion, and it can be as much as $11 billion.

Mobile Health and the FDA (Entrepreneur):

When the U.S. Food & Drug Administration sent a warning letter to an Indian
app developer in late May, tech entrepreneurs in this country took notice. The
FDA warned Biosense Technologies Private Ltd. that its app - which is designed

13
 to work with a urine-testing kit - is actually a medical device, and therefore it
must be cleared by the agency.
The large and growing community of app developers doesn’t expect this to be
the last time the FDA weighs in on mobile apps marketed for health-related uses.
“There are millions of medical apps out there. The industry is concerned,” says
Gabriel Vorobiof, a Los Angeles cardiologist and co-founder of PadInMotion, a
New York company developing mobile tools for hospital use. “It’s just not clear
how far [the FDA] will go.”

The Lauren Stevens Case (MJ, IC, pdf):

MJ: No matter what they say, or don’t say, there must be people in the Justice
Department who wish they had never heard of Lauren Stevens, the former Glax-
oSmithKline vice president and counsel who was acquitted on Tuesday of lying to
the federal government about GSK’s marketing of a drug.
Prosecutors made tactical mistakes, to be sure. But far worse than that, they
aggressively pushed a case that never should have been brought in the first case,
a federal judge concluded as he took the unusual step of acquitting Stevens before
the jurors could even start deliberating.
It would be a miscarriage of justice to permit this case to go to the jury; U.S.
Judge Roger Titus of the District of Maryland ruled in tossing out the six charges:
one count of obstructing an official proceeding, one of concealing and falsifying
documents and four of lying to the Food and Drug Administration. “I conclude
on the basis of the record before me that only with a jaundiced eye and with an
inference of guilt that’s inconsistent with the presumption of innocence could a
reasonable jury ever convict this defendant” Titus declared.
IC: It’s not often that we in-house lawyers get a scare like United States v. Lauren
Stevens. Since the trial ended on May 10 when the judge granted a motion for
acquittal, and the jury reportedly stood up and applauded, law firm advisories,
blogs and seminars on how in-house lawyers can avoid going to jail for making
statements to the government have been pouring forth.

Mobile MIM and the FDA (link):

Two of our lead engineers, Jerimy Brockway and Dave Watson, downloaded
XCode, learned Objective C, and built a prototype, all on their off hours, and
in only one week. It was remarkable. We saw the CT scan on the iPhone, scrolled
through slices, and realized that everything had just changed. . . .
We were one of eleven developers that presented during the [Apple WWDC]
keynote. That week we won an Apple Design Award for Best iPhone Healthcare
& Fitness Application.
Within only a few weeks of submitting, we were contacted by the FDA and told
that our app could not be on the app store (despite the fact that it was both free
and labeled as “not intended for diagnostic use”) because it served as marketing
for a device that was not cleared for marketing. We promptly removed it. . . .

14
 Then, over the next few months, we discovered that our proposed device raised
more questions than we had anticipated. In order to make their determination,
the FDA wanted more information than we had provided. The process stalled out
as we reviewed what we would have to do next. This 510(k) was declared not
substantially equivalent (NSE) because of insufficient data. . . .
To be honest, this dramatically new direction for our company, and the speed at
which it occurred, left us ill-prepared for the scope of the regulatory process that
would unfold.

The “It Has Come to our Attention” Letter (Eye on FDA):

There are Warning Letters, Untitled Letters, otherwise known as Notice of Viola-
tion Letters, and now there is the “It Has Come to Our Attention Letter”. I have
to admit, I had not heard of this particular kind of letter before, but one was sent
this month the maker of a medical app that performed the task of urine analysis.
I did end up finding a few other examples, however, this was the only one I found
that was actually had that as a title at the top - “It Has Come to Our Attention
Letter”.
In any case, this “It Has Come to Our Attention Letter” - hereafter IHCOAL -
raised the fact that FDA became aware of the existence of an app that served as
a device allowing one to perform one’s own urine analysis with the assistance of a
smart phone. . . . In that case, then FDA said there needs to be clearance for the
whole new system of analysis - the app used in conjunction with the strips.

“Bold move to make themselves noticed. . . brought them to our attention” (GenomeWeb):

Lastly, ignore FDA’s sudden and questionable interest in a private company’s mar-
keting budget. As OIVD Director Alberto Gutierrez described it this week to my
colleague Turna Ray, “[t]he fact is that Pathway’s bold move to make themselves
noticed achieved its end and brought them to our attention.”

Labcorp, FDA, and Ovasure (MDT):

In an Oct. 20 letter to FDA, LabCorp defends its decision to launch OvaSure out
of its nationwide lab network in June without FDA clearance or approval, but also
announced plans to discontinue the product as of Oct. 24 to maintain “positive
and responsible relationships with regulatory agencies.” LabCorp is requesting a
meeting with FDA’s Office of In Vitro Diagnostic Device Evaluation and Safety
(OIVD). . . .
The enforcement action is unusual since FDA typically does not exert authority
over “home brew” tests used as a lab service. Instead, CMS regulates lab processes
and protocols under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments.

Antitrust and Acquisitions

Instagram Antitrust Scrutiny in the US and UK (ZDNet):

15
 You’d think it would be simple: Facebook wants to buy Instagram, the parties
agree on a price, Facebook writes a big fat check, Facebook owns Instagram, now
you can follow Justin Beiber and apply special effects to photos of your cat, using
both services, seamlessly, whether you’re at your desk or on your phone.
Nothing is simple, however, when the antitrust regulators get involved.
Under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 (HSR), any
purchase over $68.2 million requires a detailed filing with the Federal Trade Com-
mission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ). This number gets adjusted each
year relative to GDP.
In the case of Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, a $1 billion transaction, the
FTC has now served Facebook with a “second request,” in other words Facebook
must now produce a mountain of documents that an army of government lawyers
will review to make sure the purchase of Instagram didn’t violate any antitrust
laws.

Antitrust, Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, and Netflix (Motley Fool):

Little more than a year ago, a combination between the largest movie rental com-
pany, Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI), and the second-largest, Hollywood Entertain-
ment (Nasdaq: HLYW), would have certainly raised antitrust questions. Block-
buster has more than 9,000 retail locations worldwide and would combine with
Hollywood Video’s nearly 2,000 locations to simply dominate the industry.
But things still change quickly in Internet time, which is why antitrust consid-
erations on Blockbuster’s $700 million offer for Hollywood Entertainment, should
they come up at all, would be seriously wrongheaded. The retail movie rental busi-
ness has been thrown into turmoil by the emergence of Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX),
the online mail-order DVD rental company.
When I say “would have raised antitrust questions,” I’m not guessing. More than
five years ago, the Federal Trade Commission scotched a planned merger between
the companies on the basis that it concentrated too much of the industry’s volume
in one company.

Complete Genomics and Antitrust (NYT):

The Chinese firm, BGI-Shenzhen, said in a statement this weekend that its acqui-
sition of Complete Genomics, based in Mountain View, Calif., had been cleared by
the federal Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviews
the national security implications of foreign takeovers of American companies. The
deal still requires antitrust clearance by the Federal Trade Commission. . . .
Much of the alarm about the deal has been raised by Illumina, a San Diego com-
pany that is the market leader in sequencing machines. It has potentially the
most to lose from the deal because BGI might buy fewer Illumina products and
even become a competitor. Weeks after the BGI deal was announced, Illumina
made its own belated bid for Complete Genomics, offering 15 cents a share more
than BGI’s bid of $3.15. But Complete Genomics rebuffed Illumina, saying such
a merger would never clear antitrust review. . . .

16
 BGI and Complete Genomics point out that Illumina has long sold its sequencing
machines - including a record-setting order of 128 high-end machines - to BGI
without raising any security concerns. Sequencing machines have not been subject
to export controls like aerospace equipment, lasers, sensors and other gear that
can have clear military uses.

Government
GovExec.com About page (govexec.com):
Government Executive’s essential editorial mission is to cover the business of the
federal government and its huge departments and agencies - dozens of which dwarf
the largest institutions in the private sector. We aspire to serve the people who
manage these huge agencies and programs in much the way that Fortune, Forbes,
and Business Week serve private-sector managers.
China and the USG (Washington Post):
The information compromised by such intrusions, security experts say, would be
enough to map how power is exercised in Washington to a remarkably nuanced
degree. The only question, they say, is whether the Chinese have the analytical
resources to sort through the massive troves of data . . .
“They’re trying to make connections between prominent people who work at think
tanks, prominent donors that they’ve heard of and how the government makes deci-
sions,” said Dan Blumenthal, director of Asian studies at the American Enterprise
Institute, which also has been hacked. “It’s a sophisticated intelligence-gathering
effort at trying to make human-network linkages of people in power, whether they
be in Congress or the executive branch.”
Matthew Yglesias on Food Trucks (Slate):
An existing provision of the San Francisco municipal code, for example, states
that any business may comment on an application for a new vending license and
directs the city to “consider” whether the proposed operation is located within 300
feet of a business that sells the same type of food or merchandise. It would be as
if Slate were allowed to complain that it should be illegal to launch a new website
to compete with our offerings, and that government should take our complaint
seriously. . . .
It’s difficult to know precisely where the line should be drawn. The food service
industry is generally heavily regulated for safety purposes, and trucks should be no
exception to that. And food sales are intimately related to parking, a fraught and
much-regulated activity all its own. But a basic rule of thumb seems to suggest
itself: The fact that business owners would prefer not to face competition is not a
valid regulatory purpose. A food truck is a kitchen and a vehicle and should need
to follow the rules that generally apply to both thing.
Most of all, the fact that an existing business owner objects to the practices of a
new business is a terrible reason to block a truck from operating. Space is scarce
and rents are high in the centers of major American cities. If new competition can
bring prices down, we’ll all be better off in the long run.

17
Matthew Yglesias on Small Business (Slate):

And thus I became a small-business man. Or, rather, I’m becoming one. En-
trepreneurship - even on the smallest and most banal scale - turns out to be a
time-consuming pain in the you-know-what. My personal inconveniences aren’t a
big deal, but in the aggregate, the difficulty of launching a business is a problem
and it may be a more important one as time goes on.
In the District of Columbia, I need to get a simple Basic Business License to
rent out a single dwelling. After puzzling over the Department of Consumer and
Regulatory Affairs website for a bit, it became clear that step No. 1 was actually
to file form FR-500 with the Office of Tax and Revenue, which you can do online.
Then it was time to hustle down to the DCRA (which closes at 4:30 p.m.) to file
the paperwork. Once there, I learned that filing the FR-500 online wasn’t good
enough - I needed a hard copy. Fortunately, the Office and Tax and Revenue was
right across the street, so I went there and refiled. Then it was back to the DCRA
to stand in line to get a number, wait for the number to be called, do some more
paperwork, wait in another line for the cashier, fork over $100 in fees, then get a
slip from the cashier to finalize the paperwork.
But then it turned out I needed to go to a third office, the Rental Accommoda-
tions Division of the Department of Housing and Community Development. It
closes at 3:30 in the afternoon and required a 15-minute walk through a sketchy
neighborhood. So the next morning I went down to that Rental Accommodations
office to file a paper claiming exemption from D.C.’s rent control law.
The striking thing about all this isn’t so much that it was annoying - which it was
- but that it had basically nothing to do with what the main purpose of landlord
regulation should be - making sure I’m not luring tenants into some kind of unsafe
situation.

Microsoft and K-Street (Tim Carney):

But it grated on Hatch and other senators that Gates didn’t want to want to
play the Washington game. Former Microsoft employee Michael Kinsley, a liberal,
wrote of Gates: “He didn’t want anything special from the government, except the
freedom to build and sell software. If the government would leave him alone, he
would leave the government alone.”
This was a mistake. One lobbyist fumed about Gates to author Gary Rivlin:
“You look at a guy like Gates, who’s been arrogant and cheap and incredibly
naive about politics. He genuinely believed that because he was creating jobs or
whatever, that’d be enough.”
Gates was “cheap” because Microsoft spent only $2 million on lobbying in 1997,
and its PAC contributed less than $50,000 during the 1996 election cycle.
“You can’t say, ‘We’re better than that,’ “ a Microsoft lobbyist told me on Friday.
“At some point, you get too big, and you can’t just ignore Washington.”
“You can sit there and say, ‘We despise Washington and we don’t want to have
anything to do with them,’ “ the lobbyist said. “But guess what? We’re going to
have hearings about the [stuff] you do.” . . .

18
 Microsoft now plays ball in Washington, and Orrin Hatch’s public flogging of Gates
was a major reason. “It’s been a year since I was in D.C.,” Gates wrote the night
before his Hatch hearing. “I think I’m going to be making this trip a lot more
frequently from now on.”

Eric Schmidt, Google Chairman and former CEO (Washington Post):

And one of the consequences of regulation is regulation prohibits real innovation,

because the regulation essentially defines a path to follow - which by definition has
a bias to the current outcome, because it’s a path for the current outcome. . . .
So what happened was that there was something called the Clipper chip, which
was the attempt by the government to enforce encryption on a particular commu-
nications aspect. And this was 1994. And it was the first time I know of that the
Valley organized around a stupid technological thing that was going to be forced
on us. . . . All of us spent a lot of time and we eventually defeated it, but I think
for many people that was sort of a wake-up call that the government could actually
pass a law that was stupid, that would actually do something wrong and wouldn’t
work. . . .
And then we had the bubble, so all of a sudden the politicians showed up. We
thought the politicians showed up because they loved us. It’s fair to say they loved
us for our money. And this was before caps were in place, so there’s this huge
fundraising cycle in the late 90s. Republican and Democrat by the way. Everyone
fed at the trough of money.
But at the time, we took the position of ‘hands off the Internet.’ You know, leave
us alone. And that’s probably still the general view here. The government can
make regulatory mistakes that can slow this whole thing down, and we see that
and we worry about it.

Steve Jobs on US Factories (NYT, Politico):

But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an

inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?
Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few
are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other
products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.
Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked. Mr. Jobs’s reply was
unambiguous. ‘Those jobs aren’t coming back,’ he said, according to another
dinner guest.
. . . According to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs, he expressed admiration for
Chinese business practices and decried U.S. regulations and labor rules.

Peter Thiel and Eric Schmidt (CNN, MR):

PETER THIEL: But, if we’re living in an accelerating technological world, and

you have zero percent interest rates in the background, you should be able to
invest all of your money in things that will return it many times over, and the

19
 fact that you’re out of ideas, maybe it’s a political problem, the government has
outlawed things. But, it still is a problem. . . .
ERIC SCHMIDT: What you discover in running these companies is that there
are limits that are not cash. There are limits of recruiting, limits of real estate,
regulatory limits as Peter points out. There are many, many such limits. And
anything that we can do to reduce those limits is a good idea.

Chris Dixon of A16Z (Blog):

A common way to think of business regulations is by analogy to sports: the rules

are specified up front, and the players follow the rules. But real regulations don’t
work that way. Regulations follow business as much as business follows regulations.
Sometimes the businesses that change regulations are startups. Startups don’t
have the resources to change regulations through lobbying. Instead, they need
to start with regulatory hacks: “back door” experiments that demonstrate the
benefits of their ideas. With luck, regulators are forced to follow. . . .
Nextel was one of the all-time great regulatory hacks. In the late 80s and early
90s, the FCC’s rules banned more than two cellular operators per city. As Nextel’s
cofounder said, “the FCC thought a wireless duopoly was the perfect market struc-
ture”. Nextel (called Fleet Call at the time) circumvented these rules by acquiring
local (e.g. taxi, pizza truck) dispatch radio companies, which they then connected
to create a nationwide (non-dispatch) cell phone service.
Predictably, the cellular incumbents tried to regulate Nextel out of existence. . . .
The incumbents argued that Nextel’s service would interfere with public safety
frequencies and therefore endanger the public. They also argued that Nextel’s
service would be too expensive . . . And their call quality would be inferior . . .
The FCC eventually decided not to block Nextel. Nextel grew to become a top
five US cellular operators before it was acquired by Sprint in 2004 for $35B. Their
service turned out to be cost-competitive, high quality, and safe. The only thing
endangered were the incumbents’ profits.
Of course regulations that truly protect the public interest are necessary. But many
regulations are created by incumbents to protect their market position. To try new
things, entrepreneurs need to find a back door. And when they succeed, it will
all look obvious in retrospect. Today’s regulatory hack is tomorrow’s mainstream
industry.

Alex MacCaw, Stripe/Twitter Engineer and O’Reilly Author (Blog):

Paradoxically, regulation can sometimes result in innovation. Within highly reg-

ulated industries, you often get entrenched businesses and monopolies ripe for
disruption. While regulation and red tape may strangle fledgling startups, if they
can struggle through and overcome it they have a distinct advantage - less com-
petition.
What’s more, regulation is often ‘hackable’. Look hard, and you’ll see lots of star-
tups out there flirting with grey areas and testing the boundaries. Often it requires

20
 a startup environment to think outside the box when it comes to interpreting and
applying regulations. Most don’t like to talk about it for obvious reasons.
The are three industries that are great examples of this phenomena at work:
drones, bio-tech and payments. . . .

A Summary
All right. That’s a fair bit of material, but the reason we chose so many articles is to illustrate
that the phenomenon we are about to discuss is:

• Not limited to low-quality companies. Note the seniority and technological accomplish-
ments of many of the individuals involved: Schmidt, Thiel, Jobs, Carmack, Musk, and
so on.

• Not limited to particular industries. The articles cover food, planes, cars, drugs, devices,
sequencing, medical records, hotels, space travel, payments, investment, and even online
poker and photosharing.

• Not limited to a particular political orientation. Natalie Foster and Matthew Yglesias
are Democrats; Orrin Hatch and the North Carolina and Texas Senate are Republican.

With those points made up front, let’s see if we can summarize a few points for the prospective
entrepreneur:

1. Understand regulation. Any business in the US that involves the physical world (1, 2,
3), and many businesses in the digital world (1, 2, 3), will mean concerning yourself
with regulation at the local, state, and federal levels.

2. Non-US businesses may have more latitude. If you are outside the US, you may have
much more latitude (1, 2). However, you may still be directly subject to US regulations
if you serve US customers, or else indirectly subject if your local regulatory agency has
“harmonized” its regulatory structure with its US counterpart.

3. DC is not civics 101. Washington does not necessarily work like civics 101, where the
only players are the executive, legislative, and judiciary. Academia, the press, nonprofits,
and regulatory agencies all play crucial roles in “how the government makes decisions”
(1, 2).

4. Agencies are active, not passive. Regulatory agencies are active entities and experience
turf conflicts between themselves (1, 2, 3, 4).

5. Agency interpretations may be found illegal. Regulatory agencies have interpretations

of the law and their authorities under the law that do not always hold up in court (1,
2, 3).

6. News attracts regulation. The attention of a regulator is often a function of a company’s

prominence in the news media (1, 2, 3)

7. Legacy businesses often use regulations in their favor. From restaurants and taxis to car
dealers and MNC pharmas, legacy businesses use regulation to erect barriers to entry
(1, 2, 3, 4)

21
 8. Regulators are police agencies. Regulatory agencies have the power to impose fines
and mount raids (1, 2, 3), and have budgets that are comparable to huge Fortune 500
companies (1, 2)

9. Travel or technology can change jurisdiction. Overseas travel (1, 2) or modern technology
can often obviate an existing regulation or render its applicability in doubt, pending a
court case.

10. Understand what regulation means for you. Finally, as an entrepreneur in a regulated
industry, you may face civil and criminal penalties if the regulator’s interpretation of
the law holds up, even if you had no awareness or involvement in the issue at hand (1,
2)

Collectively, this may give some insight into why many entrepreneurs have in the past pursued
social gaming and photosharing rather than enterprises in regulated industries. Given the
totality of evidence, let’s postulate that while a lack of imagination may play a role, at least
some of the reticence towards doing businesses with big ideas is indeed regulation.

What about the Good Aspects of Regulation?

We are expressly not making any policy recommendations in this document; our purpose is to
provide a set of facts and articles for the entrepreneur or early engineer to understand many
of the details of starting a company in a regulated industry. Because the practical aspects of
operating amidst regulation are not covered in most engineering or business school curricula,
in order to discuss them we will necessarily present facts that are not commonly circulated,
and may thus be at variance with the popular understanding of how regulation is “supposed”
to work.
But to engage the point briefly, are there regulations written with good intentions, reg-
ulations to manage externalities, regulations to prevent terrorism? Surely there are. And
in theory, it may even be the case that the current set of regulations optimally balances
Type I and Type II error rates in all circumstances, e.g. that the number of excess deaths
due to delayed pharmaceuticals is exactly equal to the number of excess deaths from defec-
tive pharmaceuticals. However, in practice this is an empirical question, and one that can
be personally adjudicated after you become directly familiar with the details of navigating
regulations, preferably after starting a company. Most non-founders are insulated from such
questions and lack direct experience with the issues. As a useful analogy, consider the following
statements about the Transportation Security Administration (TSA):

1. Millions of people go through TSA checkpoints every day.

2. The regulations are nontechnical and characterized by many as impotent; two permit-
ted three-ounce bottles, for example, may be combined into a banned six-ounce putative
weapon-of-mass-destruction through the advanced terrorist technology known as “mix-
ing”.

3. The economic stakes associated with missing a flight and/or a meeting at the destination
are in the hundreds to thousands of dollars, so people generally nevertheless comply with
arguably irrational rules and refrain from making jokes.

22
 4. A traveller is only under the jurisdiction of the TSA for a time-limited interval of a few
hours.
5. In theory, then, it should be feasible for travellers to challenge the TSA. In practice,
the TSA’s budget has increased from $1.3B in 2002 to $8.1B in 2011, and it has been
ramping up the Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) program in its plan
to expand beyond airports to search travellers at train stations, bus stops, subways, and
more.

These statements about the TSA should not prove too controversial to anyone who has traveled
on a commercial airliner within the US. However, now imagine that the only information you
had about the TSA came from its blog and numerous social media accounts. In the absence of
direct experience with a TSA checkpoint, you might then be more likely to believe that what
Bruce Schneier has called security theater has indeed made people safer. Now let’s consider
founding a company that deals with another regulatory agency, like the SEC.

1. At most a few thousand entrepreneurs contend with the agency each year.
2. The regulations are highly technical and often phrased in a forbidding way; for example,
dihydrogen monoxide may cause severe burns and is fatal if inhaled.
3. The economic stakes associated with being penalized by regulators can range into the
hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, costing you years of work and your very
freedom.
4. You are under the jurisdiction of the regulator for the lifetime of your company, whether
you know this at the outset or not.
5. The budget of your regulator is likely to increase over time (historical data, see page
91).

So: there are far fewer people passing through the regulatory aperture, the stakes are in the
millions of dollars, the timeframe is years rather than hours, and the penalties for speaking
up are significantly greater than making a joke in a TSA line. We are now no longer talking
about the possibility of a retaliatory wait time that makes you miss your flight, but rather
the possibility of a retaliatory denial that ends your company as a going concern. Now, it
might nevertheless be the case that your particular regulatory agency is in fact benevolent; we
are by no means gainsaying that as a possibility. However, as an entrepreneur, the moment
you start a company and walk through the metaphorical metal detectors into a regulated
industry, you will be able to judge for yourself whether your regulator generally achieves its
stated objectives or whether its activities are best compared to safety theater.

Anticipate the Argument

Whatever the justness of regulation in the abstract you should plan for your specific business,
once successful, to become characterized as a threat to health or safety or both. If in doubt,
think deeply about how your business could become a tool for terrorism and/or used against
the children. For example:

• Uber carries terrorists (Link: Later, another witness warned that Uber’s cars are the
perfect weapon for terrorists.)

23
 • Myspace allows predators to stalk children (Link: MySpace: Your Kids’ Danger? )

• Paypal can be used to funnel money to terrorists (Link: [T]he company now has six
months. ... to protect its online payment system from being used by money launderers
and financers of terrorists.)

• Google allows children to access inappropriate sites (Link: Google SafeSearch ’Moderate’
Setting Fails to Filter ’Playboy’ )

• Bitcoin is used for money-laundering and terrorism (Link: Bitcoin might logically attract
money launderers, human traffickers, terrorists)

• Facebook is unsafe for children (Link: EU: Children unsafe on Facebook )

If you can’t think of something involving terrorists or children, become more creative:

• A personal genomic test can make someone jump off a bridge (Link: There’s been an
apocryphal amount of fear in the field that patients may not be ready for this information,
that they’ll jump off a bridge or whatever if they have a certain gene)

• Cell phone competition endangers public safety (Link: Nextel Communications Inc.
agreed to spend $2.8 billion and give up airwaves worth $2.06 billion in exchange for new
spectrum under a U.S. government plan to lessen interference of public safety radios.)

There will always be some sense in which your product is a threat to health and safety.
Everything from Buckyballs to spinach can and will be banned/regulated if there is incidence
of a health hazard; the actual frequencies of said hazards are less material than the associated
press coverage. In general, if you can anticipate the likely line of attack, you may disable it
pre-emptively by talking about your various anti-terrorist and/or pro-children features.

The A/B/C/D Theory of Regulation

Let’s now step back for a second and see if we can enumerate some general patterns. The
fundamental concept behind a regulation is as follows: A and B wish to engage in an exchange,
but a politically powerful party C finds some aspect of this exchange distasteful and gets
party D (the government) to ban it (Figure 4). For example, a store (A) may wish to sell to
customers (B) for 24 hours per day. However, the neighbors of this store (C) complain about
the late night noise to the local govt (D), who can then choose to imposes zoning restrictions
that ban commercial transactions between certain hours (example). As another example, a
working individual (A) may wish to invest in a company (B), but enough other investors have
lost their money (C) that the SEC (D) can choose to ban transactions between A and B.
As a third example, an individual (A) wishes to try an experimental drug from a pharma co
(B), but others (C) feel that he might hurt himself, and so get the FDA (D) to block this
transaction.
Note the term choose. Regulatory agencies and local governments are run by humans
with their own incentive structures, and they have discretion in choosing whether or not to
enforce a law (or issue a new draft guidance, guidance, rule, regulation, or NPRM filing). For
example, shift workers might complain to the local government about their inability to obtain
supplies during off hours due to the ban on late-night commerce. Or people below the SEC’s
accredited investor threshold might reasonably demand the freedom to invest in their friend’s

24
 The A/B/C/D of Regulation
A and B wish to engage in a transaction. Some feature of this transaction
alarms C, a politically powerful actor. D, the government, is then called in to
block the transaction.

D (the state) bans the

Market Transaction transaction between A and B.
Note: often D doesn't wait for C and
$ will pre-emptively ban to define turf

A B
+
Political Transaction

C suffers some loss

-
when A and B transact
(noise, traffic, less C + D
revenue, and so on)

C is a politically powerful actor and

can provide some gain to D (e.g.
votes, budget increases)

Figure 4: The A/B/C/D Theory of Regulation.

new startup. Which voices then are heard? According to public choice theory, the decision as
to which citizen voices are amplified and which are damped often reduces to the question of
which voices provide grounds for agency budget/power increases. The reason is simple: like
a corporation, those agencies over time that do not grow are absorbed or sidelined by those
that do.

Technological Legalization
Importantly, with new technology it is now often feasible to revisit this A/B/C/D relationship
and restructure it in some way such that it is legalized. For example, you can set it up such
that:

• The A/B transaction is placed into a legal gray area by new technology, and then grows
at internet speed such that it becomes “unbannable” (C’s objections are overwhelmed
and D lacks the political capital to ban it)

• A or B are organized via the internet to put pressure on D, balancing C’s pressure

• C is no longer vexed by the A/B transaction externality

• C now receives some benefit when A and B transact

25
 • D (the government) receives enough benefit that C’s entreaties suddenly fall on deaf
ears

• D+ (a superior government agency) receives enough benefit to veto D

• E (a foreign government) receives a large enough benefit that D’s disapproval no longer
matters and E legalizes the transaction on its terrain.

Many successful companies use one or more of these techniques. Let’s go through several case
studies in Figure 5.

A B C Startup/Tech
Transaction Objection D (Govt) Concept
(Seller) (Buyer) (Blocker) Restructuring

Local Amazon.com open C objection

Small business Customer 24 hour sales Late night noise Neighbor
gov 24 hours obviated

Unlicensed
Payment Banks and State Square fundraising
Vendor Direct sales money D+ rev share
company competitors gov for politicians
transmitter

Car Car Unlicensed Car State Tesla direct

Direct sales D+ support
maker buyer dealer dealers gov showrooms

Private Bank FB/Goldman D denied

Investor Buy shares Non-public sale SEC
company competitors SIV: non-US jurisdiction

Citizen Unlicensed Taxi Local/State Uber internet A/B org via

Traveller Hail a cab
driver taxicab unions gov petition web vs. D

Investor may Legacy Angel List A/B petition

Startup Investor Buy shares SEC
lose money banks online petition of D+

Citizen Sublet Illegal Legacy State Airbnb online

Traveller D+ support
host a room hotels hotels gov booking

Car Install video Distracted Other Google C objection

Customer NTSB
maker dashboard driving drivers self-driving cars obviated

Plane Possible harm Concerned Unmanned C objection

Test pilot Test new plane FAA
inventor to pilot citizens; FAA drones obviated

Figure 5: A regulated transaction in which A is banned from selling to B can be restructured through
technology, startup chutzpah, or both such that it becomes legal. See text for more.

Amazon.com: invalidate zoning via web ordering, anesthetizing C

An underappreciated aspect of Amazon.com and all e-commerce sites is that physical zoning
restrictions do not apply; aside from the IRS’ EIN site, it is rare to find a website that operates
only during business hours. Thus, they can use technology to remain open 24 hours per day,
placing a storefront on every desk, phone, and lap. One can order grand pianos without
making a sound, thereby obviating C’s objection of late night noise.

26
Square: cut in D on the deal via fundraising
As another example, consider the Square dongle. From the financial industry’s perspective,
this is as disruptive as it gets. All kinds of small merchants can now accept physical credit
card payments without paying1 large banks. And no doubt this is illegal under some statute,
or can be deemed so, especially if there is enough pressure from existing financial institutions.
But Square has canny executives, and they spent quite a lot of effort on the Square fundraising
app (1, 2, 3). One can now envision the situation in which a lobbyist for BigBank is talking
to a politician about banning Square, clearly a crime against humanity, decency, and the
American way. An aide whispers in said politician’s ear (“Sir, we raised $100,000 over the last
three months using Square”) and now the bank’s entreaty falls on deaf ears. In this manner
one can co-opt D before C does.

Tesla: cut in D+ on the deal to overcome local car dealers

Tesla received a large $465M loan from the Department of Energy. While many of the other
companies in that program (A123, Solyndra, etc.) have ended up failing or going bankrupt,
Tesla is developing into a success. As such the federal government (D+) has a strong incentive
to remove unnecessary roadblocks from Tesla’s path. In particular, now that local car dealers
have started objecting that direct sales violated state law, Tesla has the political connections
to bring in federal favors to overwhelm the state governments (“Tesla may take dealer fight to
feds”), should that be necessary.

Facebook/Goldman: Market to non-US individuals, denying D jurisdiction

In 2011, the New York Times ran a negative article on an upcoming investment in Facebook by
various private investors, with the round managed by Goldman Sachs. The SEC reprioritized
based on the front page NYT article and began sending letters to Facebook and Goldman,
indicating that to continue with the transaction would be illegal unless they filed for an IPO.
Since becoming a public company is an extraordinarily complex and lengthy process, this
would have put the kibosh on the investment. Had the capital been needed for servers and
salaries and the like, it might even have put the kibosh on Facebook itself. So Facebook’s
solution was simply to offer the transaction to non-US investors, thereby obviating the SEC’s
claim of jurisdiction. This option of jurisdictional arbitrage is a relatively new phenomenon
that has been made feasible by the economic rise of the BRICs and the Asian Tigers relative
to the West.

Uber: Use the internet to organize A/B against C/D

Uber is one of the companies that is in the thick of it with respect to regulation (Figure 6).
Their initial smartphone app for internet booking took a loophole in the law and drove a truck
(or a black car) through it. This allowed them to grow rapidly in the early days before the
1
Square is a another example of a good idea where there is knowledge of a term that people outside the
industry don’t know. At first one might think Square was a bad idea, as you’d think people could just type
in their card details into a mobile phone or tablet, rather than going to the trouble of actually building and
installing a physical hardware device. At least one of the underlying reasons is the distinction between CP
(card present) vs. CNP (card not present). A transaction that includes a physical card swipe is labeled CP:
because the card is present, there is fundamentally lower risk of fraud and hence higher profit margins for
Square.

27
law caught up to them. Crucially, once the cease and desist letters started flying, Uber only
faced state/local regulation rather than federal regulation. As such they could monetize in
one city while fighting regulations in another city. This is very different2 from dealing with a
federal regulator like the SEC; to avoid a federal regulator requires going outside the country
(as in the case of Facebook and Goldman).

2
Moreover, travellers like James Fallows could use Uber in one city while on the road and then be dismayed
when it was banned in their home city. To do this with a federally regulated product would require travelling
outside the country, which is less common.

28
Figure 6: A flyer calling for Uber to be banned due to “unfair competition”. Source.

29
 And this led to a second Uber tactic for dealing with regulation: use the internet’s capacity
for direct democracy to organize A and B against C (competing cab drivers) and D (local
government). Local politicians like Mary Cheh who’d enjoyed cozy relationships with the
local taxicab industry suddenly found that they had misestimated the balance of forces:

In many of those battles, Uber’s secret weapon has been its customers: The kind
of well-heeled, tech-savvy urbanites willing to pay a hefty markup to avoid the
annoyance of hailing a cab. They may never before have shown an interest in
any other aspect of local governance. But when some taxi commissioner or city
councilor tries to take away their newfound convenience, they’ll rally to its de-
fense with calls, e-mails, and indignant tweets. . . . “We are building a playbook
for how to do this,” [Uber CEO Kalanick] told a Washington, D.C., audience of
policy wonks in January. “Other companies are going to follow suit in all kinds of
industries that each is affecting. And I think folks in D.C. and cities across the
country, you’re going to be in the middle of it.”

Perhaps the most important quality that Uber has is the psychological unwillingness to
submit, the defiance to actually fight. Because with venture capital and superior technology,
it is for the first time in recent memory possible to fight city hall, and win.

Angel List: Use A/B to petition D+ and change D’s jurisdiction

In the middle of 2012 something unusual happened. The JOBS Act included a provision that
actually legalized equity-based crowdfunding, unbanning certain kinds of transactions. As
Ben Horowitz of A16Z said:

When Ben Horowitz stopped by PandoMonthly last June, he celebrated the work
done by AngelList’s Naval Ravikant to help push the Jumpstart Our Business
Startups (JOBS) Act through Congress. Horowitz said, “He went to Washington
and he changed the law! That blew me away.”
. . . Ravikant set out to convince lawmakers that the JOBS Act, which eases
securities laws, would encourage more small business investment. Any one who’s
seen a debate or political speech over the past four years knows that “building
small businesses” is golden rhetoric for politicians on both sides of the aisle. But
even amid this climate, it wasn’t easy. “People told us that it was impossible -
and it actually basically is impossible,” Ravikant said. “We just pulled out all the
stops.”

This provision did not come without quite a fight. As context, Angel List, Funders Club,
and several other crowdfunding platforms were living for many years with the Sword of Damo-
cles over their heads. At any time, the SEC’s David Blass could decide that they were in
violation of the law and choose to press charges against them (they eventually chose not to).
This is known as enforcement discretion. In the DOJ, for example, US Attorneys like Carmen
Ortiz have plenary authority in their territory and the ability to press charges or not as is their
wont (see also Three Felonies a Day). Any civilian will be familiar with this in the context
of the highway patrol: a policeman has the power to pull you over, and need not justify his
decision to not pull all the other speeding motorists over.

30
 What Angel List did was phenomenal: even with this Sword of Damocles hanging over
them, they coordinated a campaign of signatures in favor of the new provisions in the JOBS
Act. The entrepreneurs (A) and investors (B) who benefited from Angel List were able to
organize through the internet to outweigh the interest groups (C) and regulators (D).

And More. . .
At this point you may begin to get the idea of how one can legalize previously banned trans-
actions through a combination of technology and business strategy. Airbnb used their online
booking system to host people during Hurricane Sandy and put out a joint press release with
Michael Bloomberg at nyc.gov; this support from D+ (the Mayor) may help in their new bat-
tle with the city itself. The Department of Transportation imposed many restrictions on the
kinds of devices that can be included in cars, with the idea being to avoid driver distraction;
but if self-driving cars are legalized this issue will be obviated (though this itself is in doubt).
And, as a third example, there are stringent rules on test pilots that must be followed for new
aircraft, but with unmanned aerial vehicles (i.e. drones) one can in theory fail many more
times with more aggressive designs before including the first human pilot. In short, there is
often a way to use technology to restructure a banned transaction such that it is over the
threshold of acceptability.

Disruption and the Technologies of 2013

Let’s talk now for a bit about what it means for software to eat the world, in the context
of some of the most important3 technologies of 2013. We begin with six technologies and
premises about what the coming decades will be like.

1. Management is Automation (Industrial Robotics)

2. Regulation is DRM (3D Printing)

3. Immigration Policy is a Firewall (Telepresence)

4. Medicine is Mobile (Quantified Self, Telemedicine)

5. Capital Controls are Packet Filtering (Bitcoin)

6. Warfare is Software (Autonomous Drones)

Let’s elaborate on these statements.

Industrial Robotics: Management is Automation

Perhaps the defining industrial innovation of the 20th century was the assembly line. For the
21st, it may be industrial robotics. While factories have had robots of some form for quite
a while, recent advances in robotics have made it possible to write code to automate whole
facilities (1, 2, 3, 4). Even tasks that require extreme manual dexterity will soon be done by
robot hands.
3
We intentionally exclude photosharing and social gaming for now, as well as most ecommerce and enterprise
app plays, as most of the difficulty in these companies is in the execution rather than the technology itself.
There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just not as interesting from a technology perspective.

31
 This will have significant consequences. Among other things, by turning management
into code, management now becomes tangible. As context, the stereotypical image of the
manager in the early 20th century was a fatcat boss with his feet up on a desk smoking a
cigar, while workers slaved away below on the assembly line. From today’s vantage point,
however, we can start to assign some value to the employee training manuals, assembly line
layouts, and even internal memos that those 20th century managers used to organize their
factories. This is because the 21st century manager of an assembly line can replace employee
training with scriptable machine images, can substitute architectural diagrams for assembly
line configurations, and can think in terms of message passing protocols rather than internal
memos. In other words, the previous intangible informational tasks done by the manager
now become tangibly recorded in git logs and database entries. In this world the manager
blends into the worker, and the assembly line morphs into a robotic factory scripted by said
manager/worker.
Not only does this mean far fewer workers, it means far fewer constraints. For better or for
worse, no employment law provisions apply to robots. There are no hourly restrictions, min-
imum wage laws, collective bargaining agreements, or decommissioning restrictions (WARN
act) when it comes to robots. OSHA’s power over the workplace also plummets when there
are no workers. In many ways this scenario is alarming to not just the already embattled US
factory worker, but to workers at Chinese companies like Foxconn that may be replaced by
robots. The flipside, though, is that as this technological trend begins to accelerate, the capital
requirements to mass produce a good will decline precipitously. To run a small robotic factory
will be like running one’s own datacenter, well within reach of the individual entrepreneur.

3D Printing: Regulation Becomes DRM

3D printing (1, 2, 3) has been hailed as the replacement for the assembly line, as a tool that
will allow at-home manufacturing. However, it’s hard to see how the first generation of 3D
printers can produce plastic goods that have the quality and robustness of highly-optimized,
mass produced metal items. One could make the argument that 3D printing can enable just-
in-time manufacturing and reduce supply chain lag times and inventory volumes, and that
likely will be true as the field progresses, but that’s not likely to be the most immediate
application if the plastic goods produced are significantly below the quality of mass-produced
goodsa.
An alternative view is that the most important consequence of 3D printing will be to
make it impossible to ban goods. Already we have working versions of 3D printed guns (1,
2, 3, 4, 5, 6), drones, cars, and medical devices. And in the UK Professor Lee Cronin is
working on a way to 3D print pharmaceuticals and other chemicals (1, 2, 3). People have
not yet begun to process the consequences of this. A whole alphabet soup of agencies, from
the ATF to the DHS to the FAA to the FDA to the NHTSB derive their raison d’etre from
banning or limiting access to these controlled goods. But now, because information can be
freely transmitted across the internet and then reconstituted into a physical object via a 3D
printer it will be impossible to ban these goods. As Homeland Security itself notes:

“Significant advances in three-dimensional (3D) printing capabilities, availability

of free digital 3D printer files for firearms components, and difficulty regulating file
sharing may present public safety risks from unqualified gun seekers who obtain
or manufacture 3D printed guns,” reads a May 21 bulletin . . . “Limiting access
may be impossible.”

32
 Still, they exist on the same peer-to-peer file sharing services that distribute pirated
entertainment (and legal software). “Even if the practice is prohibited by new
legislation, online distribution of these digital files will be as difficult to control as
any other illegally traded music, movie or software files.”

And consider in particular these four points:

1. There are now one billion internet-connected, unlockable Android devices built on a
Linux kernel
2. VPNs can be used to defeat deep packet inspection
3. Steganography can be used to hide substantive payloads in the photos and videos sent
over social networks
4. It has generally proven infeasible to ban encryption or even 3D printing due to their
substantial non-infringing uses

Taken together and projected out a few years, this means it is now possible to envision
a world aflood with tiny $35 Raspberry Pi servers chock full of banned goods. If history is
any indicator, the alphabet soup will not completely give up without a fight. It will seek to
push the hardware manufacturers to install DRM on their printers to disallow the printing
of particular form factors (and this has already begun). This will be similar to the efforts to
disable Photoshop from editing dollar bills, or the various efforts of Hollywood to put digital
rights management into media players. In other words, the ability of regulators to control
access to prohibited devices will reduce to the strength of their DRM.
But because we are dealing with continuous objects rather than discrete ones, the ability
of DRM to actually block the printing of certain forms is likely to be a cat and mouse game.
For example, consider the evolution in just two months time from a single shot 3D printed gun
to a multishot gun to a full 3D printed rifle capable of firing fourteen rounds. Even without
fully disabling DRM, one would only need to continuously deform an object enough to 3D
print it.

Telepresence: Immigration Policy is a Firewall

Another interesting technological trend is the rapid improvement in telepresence. Beginning
with Trevor Blackwell’s Anybots, a host of new companies like Double Robotics have arisen
that provide a video-game like interface to a remote machine. Rather than using the W/A/S/D
keys to navigate through the mazes of Doom, you now use them to remotely attend a happy
hour in San Francisco while you are in Bangalore. This is telepresence: not simply video chat,
but video chat on wheels.
The technology is just getting started, but project it out a few years. Combine Oculus Rift,
Myo, 3D Treadmill as input and Double Robotics, Petman, and Google Glass as the remote
machine. You now have a device similar to that from the movie Surrogates. You would
be using the three input devices to remote control a humanoid robot in another country or
jurisdiction. Said robot would be able to record and stream its environment back to you.
Though the system integration will be nontrivial, all six of these technologies exist today and
are individually functional.
The whole will be greater than the sum of its parts, however. Telepresence of this kind
will become an imperfect but extremely cheap substitute for a tourism junket or work visa.

33
And because physical presence is no longer necessary, nation states will find that the only way
to restrict access to certain immigrants will be to set up a firewall that restricts particular
kinds of international telepresence connections. In this manner, a nation’s immigration policy
will be as good as its firewall.

Quantified Self: Medicine is Mobile

We spoke about the quantified self trend the last time, but it’s worth thinking about this
a bit more. The combination of telemedicine, mobile appointment booking, quantified self,
3D printed devices and drugs, and medical tourism will make it much more difficult to limit
access to new biomedical technologies. Put these together and you will find people routinely
self-diagnosing via quantified self, doing a video chat with a physician in another state or
country, traveling to meet that physician for surgery, or even 3D printing their own medical
devices or drugs.
The last step might seem particularly radical, but keep two points in mind. First, the
nature of open source software platforms is that over time even this process of drug printing
or device printing will be turned into a one-click operation. It’s very hard to write a video
codec or to produce a feature film, but it’s not that hard to download a torrent and watch
it on VLC. In the same way, the open source community will quickly refine device and drug
plans and circulate them for use by early (and then not-so-early) adopters. And some of these
open source contributors will even be skilled physicians.
Second, if a patent or a paper on a drug is publicly available and yet someone can’t get
access to it for monetary or regulatory reasons, they may choose to try a radical step rather
than simply surrender to their illness. In Cowan vs. US, for example, a terminal patient sued
to get access to a drug that was being kept from him by federal regulations.

Plaintiff and Plaintiff’s doctor testified that Plaintiff is terminally ill. . . .

The Court is sympathetic to Plaintiff’s situation. However, the law is very clear,
and under the current statutes and regulations, Plaintiff’s physician may not ad-
minister the goat neutralizing antibody drug absent prior approval of the FDA. In
Court, Plaintiff argued that he should have the right to take whatever treatment he
wishes due to his terminal condition regardless of whether the FDA approves the
treatment as effective or safe, and that to prohibit him from taking the treatment
he wishes violates his rights under the United States Constitution.
...
This Court is in no way criticizing the intentions of Plaintiff and his physician or
the potential effectiveness of the proposed treatment. Plaintiff’s physician should
pursue approval of his Investigational New Drug application as quickly as possible.
Plaintiff’s doctor must obtain appropriate approval through the proper regulatory
authorities. As much as this Court may empathize with Plaintiff, the authority
to provide some type of exemptions for individuals such as Plaintiff rests with
Congress and not with this Court.

It’s difficult to read about what happened to Mr. Cowan; he’s probably passed on now.
Someone in a similar situation in 2018 or 2023 might simply (a) 3D print their drug or (b)
find a prescribing physician via telemedicine, travel overseas, and take his drug in another
country. In this manner medicine may become mobile.

34
Bitcoin: Capital Controls are Packet Filtering
Bitcoin is a new kind of digital currency, native to the Internet, that can be variously thought
of as an open-source project (like Linux), a protocol (like HTTP), or a commodity (like
gold); see this short introduction for more. The fundamental innovation behind Bitcoin is
a breakthrough in distributed systems; the underlying Bitcoin protocol can now be used to
distribute many kinds of algorithms that were thought to involve a central server, including
transaction processing. Specifically, rather than increment or decrement an account’s balance
on a central bank server, Bitcoin has a clever way of recording it on a distributed network of
computers and updating it as you send and receive payments.
Though the distributed Bitcoin network began processing transactions all the way back
in January 2009, the Cyprus bank account seizures of March 2013 were by many accounts
a major shot in the arm for Bitcoin adoption. Bitcoin prices spiked all the way up to $266
USD/BTC before falling back down to a relatively stable $100 USD/BTC. Cypriot bank
accounts were frozen and funds were seized, with the final toll being at least 47.5% of assets
on all accounts with at least $132,000 in savings:

Depositors at bailed-out Cyprus’ largest bank will lose 47.5% of their savings
exceeding 100,000 euros ($132,000), the government said Monday.
The figure comes four months after Cyprus agreed on a 23 billion-euro ($30.5
billion) rescue package with its euro partners and the International Monetary
Fund. In exchange for a 10 billion euro loan, deposits worth more than the insured
limit of 100,000 euros at the Bank of Cyprus and smaller lender Laiki were raided
in a so-called bail-in to prop up the country’s teetering banking sector.
The savings raid prompted Cypriot authorities to impose restrictions on money
withdrawals and transfers for all banks to head off a run. Christopher Pissarides,
the Nobel laureate who heads the government’s economic advisory body, forecast
Monday that the bank controls could be in place for another two years.

More bailouts and haircuts for Cypriots may follow:

The Cyprus government is looking to the European Central Bank to provide a

restructured Bank of Cyprus with as much liquidity as it needs to help turn the
country’s tanking economy around by lending to cash-starved businesses. Anas-
tasiades last month warned ECB chief Mario Draghi that Bank of Cyprus’ cash
reserves were running dangerously low.

And for the last several months, stringent capital controls have been imposed on Cyprus,
limiting the amount of money that can be taken out of the country. Finally, well before
the Cyprus haircuts occurred BCG published a document that calculated the size of haircuts
required in 10 countries with high debt to GDP ratios (Figure 7).

35
Figure 7: BCG’s estimated wealth tax in ten industrialized nations, as of 2011. (Source)

36
 While it certainly will not happen overnight, if Bitcoin grows in adoption it will make
wealth seizures and capital controls much less feasible. Wealth seizures become much more
difficult because Bitcoin private keys can be held on local laptops, stored on USB keys, or
printed on paper wallets. Unlike bank accounts held on the servers of private banks, these
air-gapped Bitcoin storage systems are not detectable or automatically debitable by central
systems.
More interestingly, capital controls also become less feasible. Traditionally one has to
declare at customs if one is carrying large amounts of physical cash (1, 2, 3). But Bitcoin
defeats this paradigm of capital controls. Not only can Bitcoin be transferred through the
internet, the private keys to a Bitcoin address can be put into a cloud folder. One could then
imagine a traveller who steps through an airport and truthfully declares that s/he has no cash
on their person. Then, once on the other side, said traveller simply downloads their private
keys from their Dropbox or Google Docs folder, or their own personal server which is still
physically present in Peoria, Kansas. And truth be told, such a trip is not even genuinely
necessary. So long as an encrypted connection can be established between two parties, Bitcoin
can be sent between those parties. And if Zerocoin and the like continue to improve, the
ability to trace that transaction through the Bitcoin Blockchain will also grow cold. In other
words, we may be approaching a future where the ability to control the entrance and exit of
capital from a jurisdiction reduces to the ability to perform deep packet inspection and packet
filtering, searching for signatures of Bitcoin transactions.

Autonomous Drones: Warfare is Software

Finally, let’s talk about drones. Self-driving cars, walking robots, and unmanned aerial vehi-
cles are about allied technologies: the ability for a machine to navigate from point A to point
B without constant human intervention and correction. Until you’ve actually flown a drone
like the consumer Parrot AR machines, it’s easy to forget the fundamental difference between
drones and RC planes: unlike RC planes, drones can fly outside the line of sight without
constant ground control.
This is somewhat magical. It means that you can, in theory, set waypoints for a drone and
then sit back and have it deliver you a taco, steering past obstacles and landing with aplomb.
But the applications move beyond tacos. Right now it requires five soldiers to control a single
Predator drone. But over time the number of drones controller per individual operator (the
fan out) will rise from 1:5 to 5:1 and beyond. And those drones will be not just aircraft but
humanoid drones.
As that number rises, military strategy starts to resemble a real-life game of Starcraft.
Everything becomes about controlling your drones. And then everything becomes about
finding zero-day vulnerabilities in the drones and/or drone control systems of your opponent.
By taking control of their drones you can turn them against the enemy or set them to self-
destruct. Ultimately what this means is that warfare becomes more than ever about quality,
not quantity. The number of soldiers won’t matter; to win a war, you will need better software.

Coda
When we put these technological trends together we can see a future of radical, disruptive
legalization through technology. Everything of significance is reduced to whether or not in-
dividuals can securely transmit packets to each other, via VPN or steganography or other
means. If that right is preserved, it will be impossible to block these technologies. And with

37
close to 1 billion mobile internet connected devices released in the world, it can be argued
that the cat is already out of the bag. Unlocking those mobile devices and using them to
send/receive encrypted packets over the internet is likely to be the means by which this future
is achieved.
There is, however, one remaining potential roadblock: the actual physical internet back-
bone itself. International transmission of information still travels over a huge worldwide
network of underseas cables, and in the event of serious exigency these cables are still under
the control4 of traditional nation states. Google’s Project Loon is perhaps the most interesting
way to address this, with a network of high-flying balloons providing internet connectivity.
Whether Loon will provide an unblockable internet or not remains to be seen, but if
everything else becomes virtual and if these technologies continue to advance we can expect
the physicality of the internet backbone to move from the background to a battleground. If
that does in fact happen - if interference with the physical backbone becomes the only way
for nation states to stop disruptive technological legalization, to reassert their jurisdiction via
packet filtering, firewalls, and DRM - at least one thing is certain. No one will contend any
more that Silicon Valley’s imagination is limited to social gaming and photosharing.

4
When Syria stopped all internet traffic leading into the country for a period of 48 hours, the initial
speculation was that the government had actually cut the cables, but eventually it looked like they had just
gone after the routing tables. See Cloudflare (1, 2, 3) for more details.

38